by von Doom
El Maestro and I sat down to watch last Saturday’s game with the expectation of watching a pretty solid matchup. England v. Spain is (well, at least on paper) one of the those “prestige” matchups that leap out of any fixture list. En-gurrr-laaaand , Albion, Blighty, the birthplace of soccer and all that jazz vs. The World F–‘in Champs! Wembley ! Sounds great right?
Clash of the Titans (?) .. err..not so much…
As if. The fact of the matter is that England, these days, lives more on past glories than on actual strength… it seems as if the Three Lions are spoken of in more “theoretical terms” by Soccer Geeks the world over as in “damn, look at that lineup.. these guys are all studs at club level.. Premier League, man.. it’s the best in the world..” but then reality sets in and they say.. “so why do they play like such shite…. ??? What. The. F–K ! ” As you can see, England as a team, fail to live up to expectation, quite often spectacularly. England is now Master and Commander of the Throne of Chokers, once so ably occupied by their Spanish rivals, but since vacated after their BEASTMODE run of back-to-back EUROCOPA and MUNDIAL.
Xabi Alonso, in a recent interview he gave to The Guardian (read it here ) surmised that the problem with England was that it was a great collection of individual talent, but that they did not play well as a team. The other telling observation by Madrid’s field marshal is that England places too high a regard on “tackling” and the “long ball” when it would be better served by focusing on technique, technique, technique. Here, here, Xabi future Messiah, manager, and President at Real Sociedad, we whole-heartedly agree. Ideally we would prefer a little of both.. for reasons we will soon elucidate on.
I bring this up because it provides a neat little segue to the problem of having too much technique. Too much technique is boring. Too much technique is kind of effeminate.. Too much technique lacks cojones, !la puta hostia!. What we saw from Spain was yet more of the same.. tiki-taka ad infinitum.. passing drills in the midfield and one, maybe two excursions past the 3/4 line. 75,000,000 % possession. 1 shot on goal. Wow. Brilliant.
Faced with this level of obnoxiousness we expected England, being coached by Fabio Capello, and all, to play to their strengths, that is Defense – with a capital D, and on that account, Capello’s men did not disappoint. To be quite honest, they can scarecely be accused of playing football. Capello pretty much lined up with an 8-2-0 formation (and that’s being charitable), completely gave up the midfield and hoped for a miracle on a set play. And guess what? He got it. England’s one clear opportunity was enough to win the game.
“Si.. Del Bosque e la mia puttana..”
As to the rest of the match, yawn, we could debate about Villa and Cesc crapping their collective pants, how if Casillas or Valdes (OK well maybe not Valdes) were in goal that ball never even makes the crossbar and Lampard is not there to poach the header. But whatever.. England sucked less than we did. They win. They rejoice. Chapeau and jolly good show, old chap. We fly off to Costa Rica.. the Spanish press goes into full blown damage control PR to protect their beloved Marques from the ever growing legion of hordes back in Spain (and around the world) who are increasingly calling for his head on a pike.
“No Need To Be Alarmed”
Accident my ass.
Bulls–t. We are very Alarmed. One thing is becoming very clear to us. Del Bosque is a god-awful coach. It is becoming clear that Spain won the World Cup despite Del Bosque not because of him. They won because they were just that much better than everyone else. In fact, Del Bosque doesn’t actually Coach..like an Aragones or Mou, to be quite honest, we don’t know what he does – other than sit on the bench impassively…. it seems clear to us, however, that he is running Guardiola’s Farsa scheme and trying to plug in the missing Farsistas with players from other teams. For this team he tried to use Man City pimp David Silva as a “falso nueve” (i.e. fake Messi).. but guess what? SILVA IS NOT MESSI. Farsa without Messi = La Coja. The results of all this “tiki” and no “taka” (as provided in Farsa by el puto enano) is the string of 1-0 victories you had in the World Cup run, the default defensive strategy of giving up the midfield, stacking the box, hope for a quick counter to catch Spain flat flooted and hope for the best.. has now become an effective counter to Spain largely because DEL BOSQUE IS UNABLE TO MAKE ANY ADJUSTMENTS.
Seriously, how f–‘in hard could this be? This drives us bonkers to no end. Spain is basically a one-dimensional, one trick pony now. It’s gotten so bad under Del Bosque that even a completely incompetent muppet like Avram Grant or Carlos Quieroz (aka el pone-conos de Ferguson) could figure out a way to beat this team.
The fact of the matter is that Spain under Del Bosque play in the middle of the field exclusively and use of the wingers to bring the ball up is almost a non-thought.. the England game was a perfect opportunity to open the wings to take advantage of the speed of Mata and to bring in Llorente who at 6’5″ would have given the English defense a rather interesting defensive proposition… instead they continue with the tired old trope of stupefyingly boring ball-control and an insistence of tiki-taka up the middle and hope for a goal. As we have seen, this s–t doesn’t work all that well against the big boys..
To prove the point – look at the following stats compiled by El Pais.. in the games (and losses) against Argentina, Portugal, Italy, and England – they are rather compelling.
The stats say this: “tiki-taka” is for wankers who like to lose..
As you can see, in all four games Spain dominated statistically, although one can say by looking at the games on TV that they got straight steamrolled by Argentina and Portugal and found ways to lose at Italy and England. The Spanish press tries to cover it up with the “oh, it’s just a friendly.. they don’t get up for those.. it’s OK.. at least we are faithful to our style.”
Well.. it’s not OK. Spain are the World Champions..and their style SUCKS! .. all these losses just telegraph to the world that this team is soft, beatable, and helmed by a man who has less intensity than a sloth. Unless, things change.. and pronto.. things are not looking good for the European Championships.. as it stands now any half way decent team with fast wingers (read: Germany and Holland) who can push the ball up with tall physical strikers is going to feed these boys their units to them. I wish the FEF had the balls to just fire Del Bosque now and go with someone who will, you know, actually change the scheme a bit instead of trying to fit round pegs into a (very) square hole. Just the fact that he keeps picking a dud like Torres over studs like Llorente and Soldado merits his firing alone.
“Frankly, we played well…” Right. Keep telling yourself that..
The age of tiki-taka is slowly fading.. thank goodness for that.. It seems that Del Bosque will be the last one to find out, and I just hope it does not take the finest generation of footballing talent ever produced by Spain down with it…
Up next a trans-atlantic trip for a meaningless game to play Costa Rica.. true to form Spain will blow these minnows out of the water 15-0… My question ? What the hell is the point of this game? Are the FEF wankers in the Villarato such whores now? Flying 22 hours over the course of three days with Liga games coming up on the weekend – this should be interesting…
DEL BOSQUE DIMISION ! A POR EL REGRESO DE ARAGONES !
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